Deeper: S3, E3 - Safe

The commandment "do not steal" isn't quite as simple as choosing not to grab our 'swag bag' and swipe stuff from peoples houses.  Though please don't.  The ways we steal from others are much more varied and subtle than we think, and some of them have spread unquestioned into our normal systems and businesses.  So - if we're going to live abundant lives as people of faith - what's the opposite of this 'stealing' that happens all the time?

Transcript

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Hi there, welcome to season three of our deeper podcasts. In this season, we're spending 10 episodes looking at how we grab hold of the abundant life that Jesus promises believers, and to do that, we are moving backwards through the Ten Commandments. In this episode called Safe, we're going to explore how we think about stealing. So we're going to upscale stealing from our cartoon image of a baddie with a swag bag who breaks into our house, and we are going to look at what stealing does to a society, how subtly stealing has become normalized, and we're going to flip it all on its head and ask what the opposite of that could be. What would a life of abundance look like, which was the opposite of all the subtle ways that we steal? We should walk away from this episode, hopefully feeling both challenged and inspired to live this godly, vibrant life that God wants us on earth to live. So brace for action. This is safe. Help us to lay them at your feet and to re-examine our beliefs and practices in the light of what you might be saying. Help us to weigh up what's said, to take what's coming from you, and to leave behind anything that's not. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Okay. Right. I think the best place to kick off everything for this one is to start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start. When we look at what the Bible starts everything off as, from Genesis chapters 1 and 2, we see God setting up this beautiful, abundant, free system where the planet around us gives us abundantly more than we could possibly ever need. There are more fish in the sea than people need, there are more crops, there's more fruit, there's more animals, there's more space than we need. And if we take care of it all and we share it all with each other, it all is designed to work. I mean that that is overly simplistic. It's the Sunday school beginning, and it does work in theory, even if we put into the mix the complication of global catastrophes like drought and earthquakes and tornadoes, what should happen in theory is that us as a global community act and react to use the abundance that we have and share it with those who have nothing. But in Genesis chapters 1 and 2, we also see the introduction of this concept that though we are made in God's image, made to reflect his values and his personhood, to share his eternal qualities woven into the mix of the gold inside us, are these seams of destruction and poison and death and greed called sin. So what we do actually as humanity is we put our own needs ahead of other people's needs instead of putting them equally with other people's needs, and we feather our own nests. We gather in as much as we can take for ourselves as often and as long as we can't see the hurt or the difficulty that others are having. You know, if we're okay if we can't see it. And so we we kind of turn off the news and turn on the latest action blockbuster, or we look away from homelessness by evicting them from our cities. We do things like that. I've been on the receiving end of theft before, physical theft, where someone literally opened our front door while we slept. They took some things they could get their hands on easily and they uh scarpered. Uh and I've also been on the end of an attempted break-in where we awoke with evidence all around the house of somebody trying to get in, their hand trying to get through our letterbox, um, which had caused them to bleed, and then the same blood was on other doors on the outside of our house where they'd all all been locked and failed to get in. But they'd tried multiple doors to get into our house while we were asleep. It makes you feel incredibly unsafe and vulnerable. Our houses are meant to be this safe spaces where we can put down our guard and fully be ourselves in every way, but the but theft leaves a person feeling violated, feeling on edge, feeling unsafe. Um we've they take it takes more than our belongings. It takes our feeling of safety, our feeling of well-being, our emotional stability, uh, and if something has been taken that's got sentimental value, they also take away precious connection to a loved one or a memory. Um, that is the effect that stealing has in every area where we steal. We steal from someone when we take what should have been rightfully theirs, and we just took it for ourselves. Withholding wages, withholding rewards, withholding breaks or promotions from people at work is stealing from them. Laughing at a person, mocking them either to their face or behind their back, steals from their dignity and their worth. It steals from their social standing, their emotional security. There are places in the world where people are imprisoned wrongly for political, ethnic or religious reasons, and these things literally steal people's hope. They steal their future, their identity and their freedom, steal their family security, their support structures, their love. Often their livelihood is taken away from them, their reputation is destroyed, and in some cases their life is literally taken away from them. These things are not right. But in thinking about this do not steal episode, I've been looking at the systems I'm part of, which are just inherently set up to take from those who have less money, less awareness, less ability to fight, and to benefit those with more money and more awareness and a greater support network or ability to fight? Why why is it normal in our society that the wealthy are able to jump waiting lists with private health care whilst those who are the poorest have to wait years for the same operation? Why why have we come to the conclusion that's okay? Why is it normal in our culture that the wealthy can buy houses in areas with less crime and more beauty and better education and cleaner air and good sanitation, which benefits those wealthy people with increased mobility, longer lifespans, better well-being, better opportunities, emotional support, whilst those who have the least are in areas where there is greater crime and more concrete and less green space and more pollution and less education and less sanitation? How is that okay? Why is it okay for businesses to charge hand over fist for essential things like food and fuel and still make billions upon billions for their shareholders, whilst ordinary people at home are forced to choose between food and heat? When did these dishonest scales become socially acceptable? How are their whole businesses set up to prey on the weak? Like the gambling industry, which is built to prey on people who pin their hopes on solving their financial problems by winning at a game which is designed for failure. It's designed to steal their future, to steal their hope, to steal their mental well-being. How is the tobacco and vaping industry okay, built around making millions of pounds by selling slow death in beautifully advertised packaged boxes, stealing money from people, freedom from people, stealing life, health, mobility? These things are not okay. But we live with them as part of our global culture, our national culture, and our individual decisions? What would that look like? What if all employers, all food companies, all clothing manufacturers, tech companies started to look at their global and local decisions and pay their workers and their suppliers fairly and equally? What if we rewarded and thanked people who do unrewarded and thankless tasks? What if companies work so that all staff got decent breaks, decent holiday time? Do you have the power to make that change in your workplace? What if instead of hoarding our wealth and position, we used those things to benefit those with the least, the ones we've actually been stealing from this whole time? Is there someone near you who needs medical care and can't afford it, or fuel and can't buy it, or food and can't provide it, or a holiday and they can't take it? Is it within your power or the power of your church group to find those people and do something about it? So, what if instead of taking and taking and taking without permission, we give and give and give? How can the people we interact with have a new, renewed sense of their own dignity? How can we bless the people or the companies that we work for instead of taking from them and getting as much as we can out of it? How can we protect the vulnerable rather than taking advantage of them? Imagine a whole community living this way. There'd be a vast change in individual and corporate personal need. There'd be a slowing of the mad pace to keep up. There would be this increase in personal well-being, there'd be this sense of stability and safety, ethical businesses being set up all over the place that benefit the needs of others rather than exploiting the needs of others. So if it's not yours, don't take it. If you have enough, give some away. If it's in your power, create safety and protection. Challenge the systems that perpetuate inequality, don't be part of them. Bless those around you and give back. The abundant life that Jesus longs us to live inside the kingdom of God is undoubtedly one where we stop stealing from people's futures, people's property, people's hopes and dignity, from people's freedom, from people's health, and we give back so people feel safe, people have enough, people have a voice, and feel like the God created heavenly representatives that they were always created to be. What change or changes do you need to make to allow this abundance to flow from you and your lifestyle out into the world around you? Let's pray. So, abundant God, give us the sight to see where we steal and where we are part of systems that work to steal from other people. Show us how we can live revolutionary, system-challenging, hope-filled lives, and may we live in ways that enable abundance to flow into the lives of others around us. In Jesus' name. Amen.